Words With Friends Co-Creator Partners with Oculus, Announces Two Games

Paul Bettner, co-creator of Words With Friends, has formed a new game studio- Playful Corp.- and has just announced two games built for the Oculus Rift, namely Lucky’s Tale and Creativerse. According to the press release below, Lucky’s Tale “is being developed exclusively for the Oculus Rift platform under a newly announced partnership between Playful Corp. and Oculus VR.” Lucky’s Tale is a 3rd person platformer, which is a rather unusual pick for a VR exclusive- there’s little information available about it besides the fact that it’ll debut during E3 2014 at booth #5222.

There’s even less information about the other announced game, Creativerse, which is an open world sandbox game- that’s all we know now, besides the fact that it’s coming to Steam some time this year.
The press release in full is below.

Paul Bettner, best known as the co-creator of “Words With Friends”, today announced his new company Playful Corp. will debut their first virtual reality game, “Lucky’s Tale”, at the upcoming E3 video game convention in Los Angeles, California. “Lucky’s Tale” is being developed exclusively for the Oculus Rift platform under a newly announced partnership between Playful Corp. and Oculus VR. Playful is one of the first studios to officially partner with Oculus to create content exclusively for the Rift.

“Virtual reality — I mean truly accurate, comfortable virtual reality — is the most important thing to happen to interactive entertainment in decades,” said Bettner, who serves as Playful’s CEO. “I know it sounds like exaggeration, but it’s impossible to explain what this is like to someone who hasn’t experienced it for themselves. Your brain is convinced that you are somewhere else, that you are in another world. I have worked my entire career to get to this moment, to create something like this.”

Founded in January 2013 (under the original name Verse Inc.), Playful Corp. is an independent studio comprised of the core team of developers that created the highly successful game “Words With Friends” and launched the “With Friends” brand in 2009. In addition to “Words With Friends”, this veteran team’s credits span multiple hit PC and console franchises, including “Age of Empires”, “Halo Wars”, and “Starcraft”.

“Oculus is committed to bringing the best and most innovative content from developers large and small to our new platform. We are delighted with our new partnership with Playful,” said David De Martini, Head of Worldwide Publishing at Oculus.

Playful has two games in development, “Lucky’s Tale” created in partnership with Oculus, and “Creativerse”, an open-world sandbox game which Playful plans to bring to the Rift after initially launching on the Steam digital distribution platform later this year.

Lucky’s Tale is a platforming adventure game experienced in the 3rd person perspective, unconventional for a VR title. Playful and Oculus have confirmed a fully playable demo will be showcased at the Oculus booth #5222 West Hall.

“This is not a port. We’ve made something new, from scratch — a made-only-for-VR game,” Bettner said. “The result is unexpected and surprisingly delightful. A platformer in VR? It’s a totally new experience, not what typically comes to mind when you think of what a VR game can be. I can’t wait to see how people react when they get to play it for the first time at E3.”

Anyone interested in following Playful’s progress can join them online: